Introduction:

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is one of the fastest growing economies in history and it is the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world. An increasing number of companies are moving production to China in order to take advantage of generous tax incentives, high productivity rates, and cheap labor. While companies can pay workers per year what they would have to pay workers per month in the US, such a low-cost workforce comes at a price - a price that the workers themselves are paying. That price is their dignity, their health, and their rights.

While poor working conditions exist in many industries and types of enterprises in China, there is substantial evidence that the problem is particularly acute in areas and sectors with a high level of foreign investment and a large number of migrant workers.

Migrant workers typically emigrate from rural areas to the prosperous coastal regions in search of work. In the countryside, there is rising unemployment and underemployment as well as extreme poverty. Migrants travel great distances and often take large financial risks in search of a better fortune in the cities. Once working, they try to send home any extra earnings to help the parents and other relatives they have left behind. Migrant worker remittances are a significant source of income for rural areas.

Sadly, migrant workers suffer discrimination at every level: the factory, in urban society and in government policy. Migrant workers are considered inferior by their urban counterparts and have long been the target of institutional exclusion by local city governments. This has forced them to take the worst jobs available in near-unregulated conditions whilst often enduring harsh treatment, low wages, and excessive work hours.

Migrant workers often do not benefit from the protection of China's labor law due to a lack of knowledge, the high costs of litigation, a lack of confidence among workers to assert their rights, incompetent government labor inspectors, the lack of grass-roots labor organizations, and the widespread perception that migrant workers are somehow less deserving of these rights or that these rights do not apply to them.

In the international arena China has signed and ratified a number of human rights and International Labor Organization (ILO) Conventions (see inset), including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). It has not, however, ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) or the ILO Conventions on freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. While there has been a great deal of focus on the lack of freedom to organize and to join trade unions in China - traditionally considered civil and political rights - it is evident that workers' economic, social, and cultural rights, which encompass the other core labor rights, are also under attack.

China has signed and ratified:
· Convention on the Rights of the Child
· Convention Against Torture
· Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
· Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (includes rural people, ethnic minorities, rural-urban migrants)
· International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
· International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed but not ratified)
· Numerous ILO Conventions including conventions on equal remuneration, minimum wage, and child labor

Focus on Guangdong Province

Guangdong Province, with an area of 68,572 square miles, is roughly the size of Missouri but with a population of 86.42 million or 13 times that of the farming state.

According to official figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, 94 million people migrated from rural areas in 2002 in search of employment. Guangdong is one of the top destinations for migrant workers who currently number around 26 million in the province according to official figures. The majority of migrant workers in Guangdong come from the surrounding provinces of Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Hunan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Jiangxi.

Guangdong Province has become the world's largest manufacturing center with several Special Economic Zones (SEZ) including the Shenzhen SEZ and the Pearl River Delta. SEZs are areas set up by the government to attract foreign investment by offering tax incentives and more flexible economic policies within their boundaries. Shenzhen has three and a half million migrants out of a total population of five million people. In 2001 the US directly accounted for 26 percent of the exports produced in Guangdong Province although this figure was probably higher given the fact that a large percentage of exports to Hong Kong actually ends up in the US. According to data from the Guangdong Statistics Bureau, Guangdong receives the highest level of foreign investment in China. Wal-Mart alone uses 4,400 factories in the province. Other major multinational investors in the province include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Proctor and Gamble, Hewlett-Packards, Intel, IBM, General Electric, and Sony.

There are some indications that the traditional pattern of migration is changing. Whereas previously young workers from the countryside would travel to the cities to work for a few years and then return home, increasing numbers of migrant workers are staying in the cities for longer and even starting families and inviting relatives to join them there. This means that migrant workers will require more support in terms of housing, education for their children, and medical care for themselves and their families.

Although migrant workers are largely responsible for the pace and success of economic development in the province - Guangdong's economy has grown more than 14 percent per year on average during the past decade and has accounted for about half of China's total GDP - there still exist many obstacles on the path to the full realization of their human rights. To read more, just order the full special issue online here.

Article written by Soledad Mills, ICCR intern
Everett Public Service Intern
MA, Columbia University, School of International Affairs